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Croatia and Serbia
Two bordering Southeastern European countries in the Balkans, a geographic area that gets
its name from the Balkan Mountains.
Separated by the Danube River, the second-longest river in Europe, there actually remains a
border dispute there between the two countries.
And awkwardly sitting in between them is Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Both used to be part of a country called Yugoslavia, and both went to war with each other after
that country fell apart in the early 1990s.
More on that in a bit.
But overall, these two beautiful countries have a lot in common.
Let’s first get this out of the way.
Serbia has the province of Kosovo.
Or does it?
Kosovo actually declared independence from Serbia back in 2008, but Serbia doesn’t
recognize it as a sovereign state.
At the time of the making of this video, half of the United Nations member states recognize
Kosovo as an independent country.
Both have a continental climate and mediterrean climate.
Both have mountains that greatly influence those climates.
Croatia is split by the Dinaric Alps, and west of those mountains they got that nice
and mild mediterrean climate and east of it can get a bit more hot and cold.
Also in eastern Croatia all of a sudden you’re in the Great Hungarian Plain, or probably
more accurately called the Pannonian Basin, with flatter land and fertile soil that’s
great for farming.
Serbia has some of that sweet Pannonian Basin farmland in the north, too, but also has lots
of hills and is surrounded by multiple mountain ranges, including the aforementioned Dinaric
Alps, the Serbian Carpathians, and Balkan Mountains.
Hey, remember them?
Both regularly get earthquakes.
Both have capitals that are also the largest cities in each country.
However, Belgrade is bigger than Zagreb.
Both are parliamentary republics.
Both used to have monarchies up to the 20th century.
Hey, this reminds me.
This video is a collaboration with Useful Charts, which just released a video about
the family tree of Serbian royalty, as well as some Croatian kings.
Be sure to check it out when you’re done watching this one.
But anyway, yeah, today people vote for their governments in both countries.
None of this being born into it crap.
Both have about the same percentage of urban residents.
Both have relatively low crime compared to the rest of the world.
Football, aka soccer, is the most popular sport in both.
Rakia, this fruit brandy with a really high alcohol content, is a popular drink in both.
The median age in both is higher than most countries, but is younger in Serbia.
Both have a shrinking population.
Serbia does have more people.
It currently has a population of around 6.8 million...well 8.8 million if you count Kosovo.
Croatia has around 4 million people.
However, experts predict Serbia’s population will shrink to 5.8 million by 2050 and Croatia’s
population will shrink to 3.5 million by 2050.
That’s pretty crazy stuff.
I mean, walk around in both countries, and you’ll find lots of mostly empty villages.
Why?
Not only are less people in both countries having babies, but it can be extremely difficult
to immigrate to both, and each year many more people move OUT of both countries due to weak
economies in both.
Yep, both are two of the poorest countries in Europe.
Still, Croatia is doing quite a bit better.
It’s easier there to move up the economic ladder.
Its GDP per capita is more than double Serbia’s.
Ah, but Serbia’s economy is currently growing at a faster rate.
Major industries in Croatia include tourism, shipbuilding, manufacturing, and agriculture.
Major industries in Serbia also include manufacturing and agriculture, but additionally energy,
machinery, and mining.
Both have universal health care and tuition-free college for citizens.
Today, the two countries mostly get along.
Five years ago, the YouTube channel NowThis World released a video called “Why Do Croatia
and Serbia Hate Each Other?” and the vast majority of the comments from Croats and Serbians
say something like “we actually don’t hate each other at all.”
Still, let’s go through some history of the two.
First of all, the Balkans have been settled by humans for thousands of years.
Various tribes settled the area.
Of note, the Illyrians along the Adriatic Sea.
The Greeks invaded parts of both modern-day Croatia and Serbia, and later the Romans pretty
much took over all of the Balkans, and both modern-day Croatia and modern-day Serbia were
part of the Roman province Illyricum.
17 Roman Emperors were born in modern-day Serbia.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, things got pretty crazy in the Balkans, with
various groups conquering and taking over the area.
Both were then still part of the Eastern Roman Empire, but it couldn’t keep much control
over the region for long.
But yeah, lots of instability and various Slavic tribes competing for power.
Some historians estimate Belgrade has been destroyed by at least 140 different wars since
Roman times.
The Croats arrived in what today is Croatia probably some time in the early 600s.
It’s hard to trace the origins of the Serbs, and I’m sure folks in the comments will
help me out, but it was probably around the same time the Croats showed up.
The Serbs and Croats both decided Christianity was cool and most converted to it.
The Kingdom of Croatia became a pretty big deal from around 925 to 1102.
Although less formalized, the Serbs controlled a big chunk of the Balkans around that time
as well.
After the East-West Schism in 1054, Croats stayed loyal to the Roman Catholic Church
and Serbs stayed loyal to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Hungary took control of Croatia and brought feudalism to it.
Yay feudalism.
In 1217, the Nemanjić dynasty went up and all started the Serbian Kingdom.
But then came the Ottoman Empire.
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, all of the Balkans found itself under Ottoman
control by the middle of the 1500s.
However, the fighting between Christians Europeans and Muslim Ottoman Turks never really stopped.
I mean, for crying out loud, the Ottoman-Habsburg Wars lasted from 1526 all the way to 1791.
Part of that was the Great Turkish War of 1683 to 1699, in which the Ottoman Empire
ended up losing part of the western Balkans, including Croatian territory.
Flash forward to the 1800s, and Serbia was still under Ottoman control.
However, this new thing called nationalism spread throughout Europe, and Croats and Serbs
caught the nationalism fever.
Serbians led two major uprisings against the Ottoman Turks in the first two decades of
that century.
After that, Serbia got semi-independence, and the Principality of Serbia was created,
which had its own parliament, constitution, and royal dynasty.
It wasn’t until 1878, however, after the Congress of Berlin, that Serbia finally got
full on independence again, and by 1882 had established the Kingdom of Serbia.
Meanwhile, Yugoslavism, or the form of nationalism that tried to get all South Slavs to unite,
was growing.
Croatians, who after 1867 were now part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were looking
at Serbia and the other Balkan states thinking “maybe WE should all just be together?”
But first, the Balkan Wars, and then finally the Ottoman Empire was out for good.
Oh but hey, a Bosnian Serb assassinated Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, which ultimately
led to World War One.
Holy crap.
During the war, Serbia ended up losing around 28% of their population.
At the end of that war, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs broke away from the crumbling
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and eventually morphed into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after Serbia
joined them.
The official language of the Kingdom?
Why Serbo Croatian of course.
However, within Yugoslavia there were still tensions and conflicts.
Croats and Serbs, in particular, were not getting along, and over the decades some became
radicalized.
During World War Two, the Nazis invaded and set up the Independent State of Croatia, which
was really a puppet state of the Nazis.
It was controlled by the fascist Ustaše organization, which systematically killed Jews, Roma, and
yes, Serbs.
However, the Yugoslav Partisans and other groups rose up and defeated the Ustaše and
Nazis. After the regain control over and established Yugoslavia, many Croatians were systematically killed as well. After World War Two ended, a dude named Josip Tito became prime minister and later
President, ruling Yugoslavia with an iron fist for 37 years.
He was indeed the glue that kept the country together, for when he died, all those internal
ethnic rivalries returned, especially after the fall of Communism and fall of the Soviet Union.
Yugoslavia broke apart in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but unfortunately it was not
all peaceful.
Serbia tried to keep Yugoslavia together, or at least a Serbian state of some sort,
in a series of wars known as the Yugoslav Wars.
Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo all wanted out.
As Croatia declared independence, and the Serbs wouldn’t let them leave, this ultimately
led to the Croatian War of Independence from 1991 to 1995.
Croatia ultimately won, but at a huge cost.
More than 15,000 Croats were dead or missing, and the war completely destroyed Croatia’s
economy and infrastructure.
The rest of the world even stepped in with Serbia, and its leaders were charged with
ethnic cleansing, which means kicking out or even killing an ethnic group.
However, like I said earlier, since then Croatia and Serbia have made up and things have been
mostly peaceful in the 21st century.
Today, residents of both countries still speak Serbo-Croatian.
I mean, technically in Serbia they speak Serbian and technically in Croatia they speak Croatian,
but come on, someone who only speaks Croatian could definitely understand someone who only
speaks Serbian and vice versa.
You really only notice the difference of the two languages when you see them written down.
So speaking of differences, how about differences between the two countries?
First of all, Serbia is bigger.
If you’ve been actually paying attention to this video so far this is no surprise,
but Serbia has more Serbs, the South Slavic ethnic group, although lots of Serbs also
live in Croatia.
Around 91% of Croatia residents identify as Croat and 83% of Serbia residents identify
as Serbs.
The life expectancy is higher in Croatia.
The poverty rate is higher in Serbia.
The main religion in both is a big difference between the two.
Most Croats identify as Roman Catholic, whereas most Serbians identify as Eastern Orthodox.
Many public holidays in both countries revolve around these two Christian denominations.
Serbians are also more religious overall.
Less residents in Serbia have internet access.
Croatia spends a higher percentage of its GDP on education.
Not counting maritime borders, Croatia borders five countries and Serbia borders eight.
Serbia is landlocked, whereas Croatia borders the Adriatic Sea and has those ports, yo.
In fact, Croatia ranks 20th in the world for most coastlines, and has more than 1,000 islands
off its coast.
Croatia gets more precipitation.
It has more national parks.
Also, more of its energy comes from renewable sources.
Croatia is part of the European Union.
Serbia is not, at least not yet, and hopes to join it by 2025.
Croatia is in NATO.
Serbia is not.
Serbia is more conservative when it comes to social issues.
Croatia has worse debt.
So I found out about this organization called Transparency International that developed
this Corruption Perceptions Index.
According to it, Croatia has a less corrupt government.
Dalmatian dogs originated in Croatia, named after the region where they came from, Dalmatia.
Oh yeah?
Well Novak Djokovic originated in Serbia.
Speaking of Djokovic, most last names in Serbia end with those last two letters.
Croatia is known throughout the world for its caves.
Serbia is known throughout the world for its raspberries.
In Zagreb, Croatia, there is a real museum there dedicated to failed relationships called
the Museum of Broken Relationships.
But if you want to start a new relationship, head on over to Belgrade, Serbia, which is
supposed to have the best nightlife in all of Europe.
Seriously, it’s a party city.
The folks who made Game of Thrones filmed several scenes in Croatia.
Nikola Tesla, arguably one of the most important inventors of all time, was born in modern-day
Croatia, although many of you in the comments would probably point out that he was a Serb.
Well dad gomit.
This video keeps making Serbia look bad, so I will end by stressing that Serbia has better
food and a better national anthem.
I know this is entirely subjective, but that’s, like, just my opinion man.
Besides, both countries are fantastic and on the up and up.
Once this stupid pandemic is over, I highly recommend visiting both.
Guess who’s back?
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Thanks to Newsvoice for sponsoring this video.
Don’t forget to check out the new video by Useful Charts. It's a companion video to this one looking at the Serbian kings
family tree, both medieval and modern.
Also looking at the Croatian kings.
Good times.
So any Serbians or Croats watching this video? If so, I would love to hear from you.
What did I get right?
What did I get wrong? What did I leave out? I obviously left out a lot.
Which countries should I compare next?
Why do I always keep asking so many questions?
Where did I put my keys and my phone?